WE had killed nine elephants,and it took us two days to cut out the tusks and get them home and bury them carefully in the sand under a large tree,which made a conspicuous mark for miles round.It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory.I never saw a better,averaging as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk.The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and seventy-pounds the pair,as nearly as we could judge.
As for Khiva himself,we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear hole,together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey to a better world.On the third day we started on,hoping that we might one day return to dig up our buried ivory,and in due course,after a long and wearisome tramp,and many adventures which I have not space to detail,reached Sitanda's Kraal,near the Lukanga River,the real starting-point of our expedition.Very well do I recoiled our arrival at that place.To the right was a scattered native settlement with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands down by the water,where these savages grew their scanty supply of grain,and beyond it great tracts of waving "veldt"covered with tall grass,over which herds of the smaller game were wandering To the left was the vast desert.This spot appeared to be the outpost of the fertile country,and it would be difficult to say to what natural causes such an abrupt change in the character of the soil was due.But so it was.
Just below our encampment flowed a little stream,on the farther side of which was a stony slope,the same down which I had twenty years before seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach Solomon's Mines,and beyond that slope began the waterless desert covered with a species of karoo shrub.It was evening when we pitched our camp,and the great fiery ball of the sun was sinking into the desert,sending glorious rays of many-colored light flying over all the vast expanse.Leaving Good to superintend the arrangement of our little camp;I took Sir Henry with me,and we walked to the top of the slope opposite and gazed out across the desert.The air was very clear,and far,far away I could distinguish the faint blue outlines,here and there capped with white,of the great Suliman Berg.
"There,"I said,"there is the wall of Solomon's Mines,but God knows if we shall ever climb it.""My brother should be there,and if he is I shall reach him somehow,"said Sir Henry,in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man.
"I hope so,"I answered,and turned to go back to the camp,when I saw that we were not alone.Behind us,also gazing earnestly towards the far-off mountains,was the great Zulu,Umbopa.
The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him,but addressed himself to Sir Henry,to whom he had attached himself.
"Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey,`Incubu?"(a native word meaning,I believe,an elephant,and the name given to Sir Henry by the Kaffirs)he said,pointing towards the mountains with his broad assegai.
I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way.It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves,but it is not decent that they should call one by their heathenish appellations to one's face.The man laughed a quiet little laugh which angered me.
"How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi I serve?"he said."He is of a royal house,no doubt;one can see it in his size and in his eye;so,mayhap,am I.At least I am as great a man.Be my mouth,oh,Macumazahn,and say my words to the In koos In cubu,my master,for I would speak to him and to thee."
I was.angry with the man,for I am not accustomed to be talked to in that way by Kaffirs but somehow he impressed me,and besides I was curious to know what he had to say,so I translated,expressing my opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow,and that his swagger was outrageous.
"Yes,Umbopa,"answered Sir Henry,"I would journey there.""The desert is wide and there is no water;the mountains are high and covered with snow,and man cannot say what is beyond them behind the place where the sun sets;how shalt thou come thither,Incubu,and wherefore dost thou go?"I translated again.
"Tell him,"answered Sir Henry,"that I go because I believe that a man of my blood,my brother,has gone there before me,and I go to seek him.""That is so,Incubu;a man I met on the road told me that a white man went out into the desert two years ago towards those mountains with one servant,a hunter.They never came back.""How do you know it was my brother?"asked Sir Henry.
"Nay,I know not.But the man,when I asked what the white man was like,said that he had your eyes and a black beard.He said,too,that the name of the hunter with him was Jim,that he was a Bechuana hunter and wore clothes.""There is no doubt about it,"said I;"I knew Jim well."Sir Henry nodded."I was sure of it,"he said."If George set his mind upon a thing he generally did it.It was always so from his boyhood.
If he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it,unless some accident has overtaken him,and we must look for him on the other side."Umbopa understood English,though he rarely spoke it.
"It is a far journey,Incubi,"he put in,and I translated his remark.
"Yes,"answered Sir Henry,"it is far.But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it.There is nothing,Umbopa,that he cannot do,there are no mountains he may not climb,there are no deserts he cannot cross,save a mountain and a desert of which you are spared the knowledge,if love leads him,and he holds his life in his hand counting it as nothing,ready to keep it or to lose it as Providence may order."I translated.
"Great words,my father,"answered the Zulu (I always called him a Zulu,though he was not really one),"great,swelling words,fit to fill the mouth of a man.Thou art right,my father Incubu.Listen!what is life?